by Nicholas Stevens
As ClevelandClassical reported last week, the performances of Handel’s Messiah that Jane Glover led with the Cleveland Orchestra this past weekend marked her hundredth through hundred-and-third times conducting the oratorio. The world can only have a handful of definitive Messiah masters at any given time, and in our moment, she certainly belongs among them. As the Orchestra’s performance under Glover on Thursday, December 6 demonstrated, status as an expert confers a certain privilege: that of taking risks with a perennial favorite. [Read more…]
In some cases, a compelling background or story is at least half the appeal of a piece of music — and John Adams’ 
Any concert that features a first-rate ensemble, with a respected and rising conductor at the helm and a renowned soloist as a guest, will make for a great evening’s worth of music-making. However, some events seem to invite the audience to levitate in their seats, absorbed and enchanted. Jonathan Cohen drew extraordinary sounds from The Cleveland Orchestra in one such concert last week. When pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout joined in, the assembled musicians achieved something like transcendence.
While November has only recently arrived, many people find themselves already planning for Thanksgiving. For some in our community, however, such planning isn’t as simple as deciding who will cook the turkey and who will bake the pies. Tens of thousands of people in Northeast Ohio will instead be wondering if they’ll have food at all for Thanksgiving, 